FDA Clears BPA… Again

Bisphenol-A (BPA), the chemical that makes plastic shatterproof and protects canned food from spoilage, has for some time now been the trophy prize that agenda-driven, junk-scientists have hunted. Don’t these fear-mongerers, scared at their own shadow, have better things to do than go after such mundane consumer products as water bottles and canned chili?

Unfortunately for them and their agenda, last month the FDA published its findings that BPA is safe in the journal Toxicological Sciences. It found that BPA caused no health effects at doses up to more than 70,000 times the usual human exposure. No changes in body weight, no effects on hormone levels, no changes in reproductive health as the junk-scientists have claimed. Dan Doerge, FDA scientist who worked on the study, said, “There really were no biologically significant changes observed at all.”

The biggest hunting party after BPA has been the discredited Environmental Working (Worry) Group, which seemingly has a weekly scare quota of alarmist campaigns. In the bizzaro-logic of groups like EWG: Because excessively large doses of BPA can act a little like the hormone estrogen, then the tiny amounts humans are exposed to are responsible any host of hormonal issues. Apparently they have never heard the difference between correlation and causation. No wonder 79 percent Society of Toxicology members who expressed an opinion found that EWG exaggerates chemical risks.

Biomedical scientist and scholar at the Hoover Institution Dr. Henry Miller says agenda-driven science peddled by EWG and others “is actually designed to give a false, preordained result in order to provide propaganda that can be cited by activists long after the findings have been discredited.” Studies use problematic experimental design, shoddy statistical methodology, selective exclusion of data points, misleading or exaggerated conclusions, and failure to discriminate between association and causation. In other words, calling this “science” is blasphemous.

The best, most credible science has consistently found BPA safe since it was first used in products in the 1950s. The recent findings, concludes Doerge, “support and extend the conclusion from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration that BPA is safe.”